Lake Stevens police post crash memos

The department receives a lot of public records requests for crash memos, interim Police Chief Dan Lorentzen said Thursday.

“This just makes it a lot easier for folks to go directly to the website,” he said.

It’s a bit of a bold move. Generally, only the Washington State Patrol provides memos containing that much detail about collisions. Monroe police do sometimes. WSP made its memos available to the public awhile ago, but few people signed up outside of media and government, officials said.

The archives at Lake Stevens are relatively new and don’t include the fatal April 11 crash where a car drove into a house along 99th Avenue. No new details about that crash are available pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.

The weekly blotter and police department news releases also are now archived online here.

The information provided online may have some redactions as required by state and federal privacy laws, Lorentzen said. Not all case reports are available because of limitations on staff time.

“We’re trying to get as much information as we can push out to the public in the easiest fashion,” he said.

Reminder: You can find similar information from Everett and Stanwood police on their Facebook pages.